Modern life

Someone gave the kidlet a virtual pet for their birthday. They were sitting on the couch with it, and I was sitting on my chair attempting to concentrate on LJ over their constant babble of comments: "If you push this button? The monkey will juggle bananas! And if he's not hungry, you offer him food and he shakes his head!"

It's something like a real pet and something like worship. I mean, if they neglect the monkey, he will disappear and they'll feel guilty so they'll have to hunt for him and find him and brush him and feed him and give him bananas to juggle. But if they faithfully pay attention to him, he'll lead them into all these new locations, where they'll pick up something called "virtual stickers." They want to take their monkey lots of places, because if they do, he'll get mail from those places, and that will make him happy.

They lost it today and turned the house upside-down looking for it. "Oh, good," they said, "he's not sick or anything. He's just asleep."

Finally they looked at me over the top of my laptop screen and said, "Don't you wish you had a virtual pet?"

Oh, no, honey, I'm very happy with my own digital idol.


edited 2019 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns